Another great weekend in the Sierra Nevada.
Middle Palisade Peak lies in the center of the highest continuous ridge along the Sierra Crest. Paul had made all the inquiries and plans for a quick trip to climb Middle Palisade Peak over the weekend of Aug 21-22. Middle Palisade Peak has a number of routes of various levels of difficulty. Our plans were to attack the 'normal' route, which is generally an extended class 3 scramble.
I arrived at the trail head parking at around mid day on Saturday and met up with Paul and Marija from Las Vegas. It was smokey in the air, and I realized this was likely coming from the Sheep Fire in King's Canyon. The approach is a gradual climb from the Glacier Lodge area to our camp at Brainard Lake. The region is very scenic, and my opinion is that the further north you are in the Sierra, the more green and interesting it becomes.
We experienced a tough night in high winds. In a tent, the 30-40 knot gusts were humbling! The cost of having a light weight tent is not getting much sleep when the sides of he tent continue to threaten to collapse in the winds. I couldn't imagine trying to climb to over 14,000 feet in these conditions. We woke up at 4am, and figured that we might as well give the approach a shot, as we could always turn around. We started up at around 5am in the dark. From Bernard lake on, it is off-trail, steep hiking on mostly talus and scree slopes.
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| Marija on the Endless Talus Approach |
It took about 5 hours to get to the base of the peak. We discussed the several options available to climb up the class 3 chute. Several we had met mentioned getting off-route and turning around, so we consulted our route guides and looked for the obvious and good route that went from the glacier. Ice axes were helpful in crossing the snow, and we navigated the transition to the rock chute and ledge system up to the main chute. From there, it was just hard continuous class 3 climbing at high altitude. My fittness (or lack thereof) is always tested at 13,000 ft. We were slow and steady, and very careful not to knock rocks off.
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| Marija on the Long Continuous Chute to the Summit of Middle Palisade Peak |
Around noon, we made it to the top! Very windy down to the south, but nice weather on our side, couldn't be better really. It was a very small summit tower, and it took some challenging moves to make summit platform. On the next tower over, another climber provide a picture opportunity.
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| Climber on Tower |
It took us longer to get down, mainly due to the rock fall hazard. There were now 3 other couples in the chute either going up or down. Marija and I had to get back to our vehicles that evening, Paul (who demonstrated his wisdom) was spending another night at camp. I arrived at my car late, and made the long drive back home, spent.
